HiveMQ Closes €40 Million Series A Funding to Accelerate Adoption of MQTT Messaging Platform for IoT Data

Funding round led by Molten, with participation by Mubadala Capital, Earlybird and Senovo, to fund new R&D and go-to-market expansion

Landshut, Germany - May 4, 2022 HiveMQ, provider of the enterprise MQTT messaging platform, today announced it has closed €40 million in funding led by Molten Ventures, including co-investment from new investors Mubadala Capital and Illusian, and existing investor Earlybird, Senovo and New Forge, bringing the total amount raised to €49.3 million. The investment will be used to further accelerate the development, growth and adoption of the company’s MQTT messaging platform which is used by Fortune 500 companies to power IoT data collection between IoT devices and enterprise IT services.

Founded in 2012 by Christian Götz, Dominik Obermaier, and Christoph Schäbel, HiveMQ’s messaging platform allows companies to capitalize on the industry trend to connect IoT devices to the cloud. HiveMQ was an early adopter of MQTT, an IoT standard that has become the default for IoT messaging and connectivity. From its roots in Germany and the automotive industry, the company has grown quickly internationally and across industries with more than 50% of revenue coming from US-based companies.

By 2025, there will be an estimated 40 billion IoT devices connected to the Internet that will be ready to transmit and receive data. It is expected that a connected car generates 2TB data per day, and a connected factory up to 5 petabytes (PB) data per week, yet current enterprise messaging platforms are not able to handle the amount of data or connections generated by IoT devices. A new IoT messaging platform is required to scale the data exchange between IoT devices and enterprise IT services. HiveMQ offers an IoT messaging platform based on MQTT, a widely adopted IoT protocol for data exchange.

“Building on a very successful 2021, we are thrilled to have Molten Ventures, Mubadala Capital and Illusian join our team of investors and existing investors Earlybird, Senovo and New Forge reinvesting in HiveMQ as we continue to grow the IoT messaging industry,” explains Christian Götz, CEO and Co-founder of HiveMQ. “We see strong cross industry interest in our vision that an IoT messaging platform is required to implement a reliable and scalable IoT system. This investment will allow us to expand our go-to-market teams and accelerate our R&D in HiveMQ Cloud and the HiveMQ ecosystem.”

HiveMQ is working with global brands as they transform their products to be more connected and modernize their manufacturing operations. For instance, global automotive manufacturers are adopting MQTT as the standard for connected car platforms to improve the overall customer experience and gain more insight into the vehicle operation. By collecting real-time information of a connected vehicle, automotive manufacturers can provide customized service to their customers and use this information to improve future driving experiences.

In addition to connected cars, HiveMQ and MQTT are revolutionizing many industries who are adopting an IoT messaging platform, such as:

Automotive, chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing industries that need to capture real-time information of their manufacturing operations to improve the overall efficiency and allow for more flexible manufacturing.
Transportation industries to gain better insight into fleet management of trucks and trains to improve transparency of the supply chain and lower cost of transportation.
Smart cities are adopting MQTT to modernize public transportation to provide better customer service and lower operating costs.
Companies building connected products see an opportunity to increase revenue, improve customer retention and customer services by having real-time connectivity with the products as they are used by their customers. HiveMQ works with a very wide range of connected products, including drones, water monitoring systems, industrial dishwashers, TV set-top boxes, and many more.

Christoph Hornung, Partner at Molten Ventures, commented:

Global investment in IoT will grow substantially in the coming years, and we were impressed by HiveMQ’s vision and strategy to capitalise. The team at HiveMQ has built a product which revolutionises how companies connect with their customers and suppliers - something the IoT industry desperately needs. The opportunity for HiveMQ is to become the world's leading IoT messaging platform and we look forward to working with Christian and the team to help deliver their potential.

Max Holnaicher, Investor at Mubadala Capital Ventures, commented:

HiveMQ has established itself as a thought leader and enterprise-grade solution in a MQTT market that is rapidly gaining adoption. We were extremely impressed by HiveMQ’s ability to partner with Fortune 500 companies on mission critical use cases - from BMW and Audi to Liberty Global and Honeywell. We are excited to partner with Christian, Dominik, Christoph and the broader team on their continued expansion.

Useful Links to HiveMQ Information:

About HiveMQ

HiveMQ helps companies connect devices to the Internet. Our HiveMQ MQTT platform makes it possible to move data from device to cloud in a secure, reliable and scalable manner. Over 130 customers, including many Fortune 500 companies, rely on HiveMQ in production for mission critical use cases like connected cars, transportation, logistics, Industry 4.0 and connected IoT products. Visit hivemq.com for more details.